The government of Norway has brazenly taken three American children from their Christian parents and assumed “permanent custody” of them, after one of the children falsely claimed child abuse in the home before recanting the accusation.
In 2018 the mother, Natalya Shutakova, who is an American citizen, and her three American children moved from Atlanta, Georgia, to Norway to live with her husband and the children’s father.
While all was well for the Christian family living in a small town outside Oslo, things quickly changed for Shutakova and her husband, Lithuanian national Zigintas Aleksandravicius, in May of this year when their oldest child, 11-year-old daughter Brigita, claimed to a teacher at her school that she was being abused at home. That charged prompted Norway’s controversial child welfare agency, Barnevernet, to remove the girl, along with her nine-year-old brother and seven-year-old sister, from the home.
The Norwegian child “protection” authorities later discovered that the daughter had made the false abuse charge after her parents took away her cellphone, and the 11-year-old even made a video admitting that she had lied about the abuse, and pleading that she wanted to return to her parents.
“I am right now lost,” the girl says in the video. I want to go back home. I want to go back home to my mom and dad…. I made a huge mistake and I regret it for what has happened and the drama that I lied about. I lied about it in school because I didn’t know what I was doing.” The girl added that “I feel very sorry. I want my mom and dad back. I want my family back.”
Although over a half-dozen witnesses corroborated that the girl had lied, and while all criminal charges against the parents were dropped, a Norwegian judge nonetheless gave “permanent” custody to the state, providing the parents just three visits per year with their children. In late September, Shutakova and her husband saw their children for the last time before the Barnevernet bureaucrats took permanent custody of the children.
“We had our last meeting with our children and right after that our lawyer called and informed us of a decision against us,” Shutakova said. “But this is not surprising since this court belongs to Barnevernet. It’s their court.”
Shutakova said that she and her husband must now wait several weeks before they can appeal their case to a higher Norwegian court. “And if we don’t win there, then the next level waiting time will be a year,” Shutakova told ChristianPost.com. “We cannot lose this time in a country where the court system is corrupt. The country got convicted in the European Court of Human Rights for violating children and family rights.”
Shutakova was referring to a recent case before the European Court of Human Rights, which found that Norway’s welfare courts regularly violate the rights of families under the banner of “child welfare.” In fact, the tiny nation of five million citizens has over two dozen such cases pending against it in the European Court of Human Rights — more than any other country.
CBN News reported that it was Barnevernet “that took five children from Romanian and Norwegian parents Marius and Ruth Bodnariu in 2016. Worldwide outrage forced the Norwegian government to return the children. The Bodnariu family then escaped from Norway and have filed suit before the European Court of Human Rights.”
“There is something severely wrong going on in Norway that they are taking children out of well-working families,” Marius Reikerås, a Norwegian human rights advocate before the European Court of Human Rights, told CBN News. “We’re not talking about child abuse and we are not talking about alcoholism or drug abuse. We are talking about, in general, normal families that have all the capabilities to provide good care for their children.”
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